Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Are humans even necessary?

What a terrible question to even ask! Of course, we are necessary: it is the function of the universe to serve our needs and wants, isn’t it? Isn’t that the point of everything—to provide for our well-being and security? Well, that’s one way to look at it, and it is based on a certain assumption: that humans are in control. But humans have been steadily relinquishing control to machines for a couple of centuries now, and by now the vast majority of us is unable to comprehend, never mind control, the machines on which our survival depends in all of their awesome complexity. A few highly placed specialists can still get at the levers that control some of the machines, but their function has been reduced to serving the needs of the machines themselves, not human needs. The assumption that humans are still in control is starting to seem outlandish.

The next assumption to question is that the machines serve human needs and wants. Yes, there is still plenty of evidence that they do, for quite a lot of people, and in the more stable and prosperous societies most of the people are provided for in some manner. But there has been a marked tendency for societies around the world to become less stable and less prosperous over time, as resources are depleted and the environment degrades. The typical solution to that has been the imposition of austerity, which deprioritizes human needs over those of the machines—industrial, commercial and financial—which must continue functioning in order for the rich to continue to get richer. Perhaps the situation where the machines serve human needs is a transient one? Perhaps most humans are just a legacy cost, to be eliminated in the next round of cost-cutting?

To be sure, the machines would still be required to serve the needs of the billionaires, and the millionaires who serve them. But as for the rest of humanity, perhaps at this point it is just an unnecessary burden from the machines’ point of view? Indeed, it would appear that many different efforts are underway to whittle away at this burden. Let us take a trip down memory lane, to see where we came from, and then try to catch a glimpse of where we might be headed.